पुरुषः प्रकृतिस्थो हि भुङ्क्ते प्रकृतिजान्गुणान्।कारणं गुणसङ्गोऽस्य सदसद्योनिजन्मसु॥
puruṣaḥ prakṛti-stho hi bhuṅkte prakṛti-jān guṇānkāraṇaṃ guṇa-saṅgo ’sya sad-asad-yoni-janmasu
Word by word
The verse says
The person, seated in nature, experiences the strands born of nature. Attachment to those strands is the reason for birth in good wombs and bad ones.
In plain words
Saṅga — attachment, sticking. That is named as the mechanism.
Not wickedness, not punishment. The gripping itself does the work.
And the result described is where you end up next, which this book has consistently treated as a continuation rather than a verdict.
Where you've felt this · with money
Your uncle has been anxious about money since he was a child. At fifty he still makes the same kind of decision he made at twenty-five, long after the circumstances changed. Nobody is doing this to him. The grip formed early and has been choosing ever since.
Going deeper
Attachment as a mechanism rather than a fault is how this book keeps describing the problem, and here it is given its widest application.
The word is saṅga — contact, sticking to. What produces the next situation is not sin in the moral sense but the fact of having stuck to something. That is consistent with Chapter 9, where falling back was described with a word for slipping rather than for being punished.
It also makes the process intelligible instead of arbitrary. Where you are heading is a function of what you are holding.
The practical version does not require believing anything about rebirth. Look at the things you are gripping and you have a fair forecast of the next few years, because a grip does not release itself and it will keep producing situations of the same shape until it does.